


on the eve of forever

by WingedQuill



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Fluff, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, God Jaskier | Dandelion, Gods, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, Immortality, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Nervousness, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24818935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: “You’re scared,” Jaskier murmurs. Geralt considers denying it, considers looking away. But he doesn’t have to be a witcher here, brave and stubborn and carved from stone. He can just be a man, trembling in the face of something new.“Yeah,” he says.“Oh, my heart.”Jaskier dips his head and presses a kiss into the join of Geralt’s shoulder.“I haven’t felt like this since…since the night before the trials,” Geralt admits. Jaskier’s fingers skim over his back, gentle, so very gentle. “I know what it’s like to be made anew.”“Not like this,” Jaskier whispers. “This isn’t going to mold you into another kind of weapon. It’s just going to make you into…into you.”Or: Jaskier is a god. Geralt is on the verge of becoming one.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 67
Kudos: 911
Collections: The Best Fics I've Read, The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #001





	on the eve of forever

“It won’t hurt.”

Jaskier’s lips brush gently against the back of Geralt’s neck as he speaks, his body a long line of heat against Geralt’s, his heart a fluttering bird against Geralt’s shoulder blades. They lie curled together in the center of the absurdly-large bed that Jaskier’s parents have given them, watching the moonbeams as they slip across the wall.

Geralt is hyper-aware of the breath in his lungs, the ache in his muscles, the dryness in his mouth. The age and weariness and mortality baked into every inch of him.

“Who’s in charge of the moon?” Geralt asks, instead of acknowledging Jaskier’s statement. Jaskier sighs against his skin, but doesn’t push. At least not for now. He’ll come back to it later, Geralt knows.

“My hmm….aunt’s daughter’s husband’s half-brother? His name is Petrichor.”

Geralt is already getting a headache thinking about Jaskier’s family tree. He suspects it’ll take decades to learn fully. Already, every time he thinks he has Jaskier’s _immediate_ family sorted, some new sibling will pop up out of nowhere.

“You friends?” he asks. Jaskier snorts.

“Hardly. I see him once every…century or so? He’s always off with Hush when he’s not working.”

“…and Hush is?”

“His wife. In charge of the tides,” Jaskier yawns. He told Geralt once that he almost enjoys the needs that come naturally to his human form—the hunger and boredom and sleepiness. That they make him feel more connected to the world, to those that take inspiration from him.

Geralt doesn’t know if he’ll feel the same, when he’s like Jaskier. The thought of giving up the exhaustion, the insomnia that’s plagued him for decades now—it sounds like a blessing.

The thought of not having a heartbeat sounds less so.

“Is Hush like you or like me?”

A born god, or a made one?

“Like you,” Jaskier says. His arms tighten around Geralt’s chest. “It was a thousand years ago. Petrichor has always gotten prayers for luck and guidance and protection against evil. A few prayers for love too, from poets with romantic musings about the night sky. But then he started hearing prayers for the safe return of ships. Which isn’t in his domain at all but—” another yawn. Geralt burrows deeper into his embrace, reaching up to hold the hand that rests over his heart. “—but she’d figured out that the moon and the ocean were linked.”

“Hmm. Odd to think that we used to not know that.”

“You’ll get used to common knowledge changing,” Jaskier laughs. “Wait and see what they’ll think about medicine in a hundred years.”

 _They._ How long would it take for Geralt to start seeing mortals as _they?_ A year? A century? Or would it happen as soon as his body was washed away?

“Used to drill holes in their skulls to get rid of bad spirits.”

Geralt winces.

“Didn’t they stop after the first death?”

“Oh no. There were survivors.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Really.”

The arms disappear from around his chest and the bed shifts as Jaskier pushes himself upright. His fingers stroke through Geralt’s hair with the same care he shows his lute, his worshippers. Like he’s handling something so delicate, but full of so much potential.

Jaskier has always seen so much potential in him. Even when Geralt saw none of it in himself.

“There are always survivors,” Jaskier says. His voice rings clear in the stillness of their room. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that. Mortals have a special kind of stubbornness.”

“We do, don’t we?”

“And there it is.”

Geralt rolls over and sits up to face his lover—his _fiancé,_ now. There’s a softness to his expression that he only lets shine in moments like this, moments that they lie together and let vulnerability in. When he doesn’t need to be quick and clever and godly, when he doesn’t need to make his every word drip with inspiration. When he can just be a man in love and loved in return.

“You’re scared,” Jaskier murmurs. Geralt considers denying it, considers looking away. But he doesn’t have to be a witcher here, brave and stubborn and carved from stone. He can just be a man, trembling in the face of something new.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Oh, my heart.” 

Jaskier dips his head and presses a kiss into the join of Geralt’s shoulder.

“I haven’t felt like this since…since the night before the trials,” Geralt admits. Jaskier’s fingers skim over his back, gentle, so very gentle. “I know what it’s like to be made anew.”

“Not like this,” Jaskier whispers. “This isn’t going to mold you into another kind of weapon. It’s just going to make you into…into _you.”_

“But what am I?”

A kiss to his neck. “Kind.” His jaw. “Caring.” Pressed to his lips, lingering but not demanding. He pulls away, barely enough to speak. His breath hums against Geralt’s lips. “Good.”

Geralt laughs. It doesn’t sound particularly joyful.

“My love,” Jaskier’s hand is at his cheek now, thumbing away the tears that have started to fall without Geralt’s permission. “Why does that thought pain you so?”

“I just—what if you’re wrong? What if I step out of the water and I’m a god of death or war or monsters? That’s what my life has been made of.”

“It is not what _you_ are made of,” Jaskier says, like he’s stating a fact, an unbreakable promise, a truth understood by every babe as soon as they are born. “It is not what you will be.”

And Jaskier has never lied to him before.

Has never once tried to cause him pain.

“Okay,” Geralt whispers, looking into Jaskier’s eyes—eyes that have seen millenia pass and civilizations fall, yet still look so sad that one wayward witcher is crying under their gaze. “Alright. I—I believe you.”

“Good,” Jaskier says. He lies back down, tugging Geralt with him. Geralt goes easily, burying his head in Jaskier’s chest and breathing in the clean warmth of his lover.

It’s his last night as a mortal. It’s the last night that Jaskier will feel the need to protect him like this, to take him into his arms and shield him against all the horrors of the world.

But Geralt hopes he’ll keep doing it, even after he becomes something stronger.

***

The garden of the gods is much less grand then one might think.

The gods of the flowers and trees spend most of their time on Earth, after all, spreading their gifts wherever they walk, stepping wildflowers across countless fields and weaving magic into the trees of Brokilon forest (and other, wilder places, places that Jaskier has promised to take Geralt to for their honeymoon).

But they have let some of their magic seep into this in-between space, let nature grow wild and beautiful among the many statues and fountains made by their more artistically-minded fellows. And, tucked away in a small corner of the garden, where the flowers bloom the thickest, is a smooth stone basin.

It doesn’t look like it’s been used in a very long time. Fallen flowers and leaves coat the bottom of it—though none of them have wilted. Geralt wonders if it’s the magic of this place, or if one of Jaskier’s siblings snuck out here last night to make the bath look pretty.

“Here we are,” Jaskier says. He squeezes Geralt’s hand.

“Here we are,” Geralt agrees. His mortality feels heavy and fragile all at once, a cloak made out of leaden paper.

Jaskier takes a deep, steadying breath. He bites his lip, shuffles his feet. All signs that scream nervousness. He looked like that when he first told Geralt he loved him, when he explained he wasn’t quite human, when he asked if Geralt would want to join him in eternity.

When he explained that gods only had the magic to change a single mortal, that he’d been holding on to that magic since the birth of music. That Geralt was it for him.

“If you—if you don’t want this,” he says. “I understand. I _do._ You don’t need to do this. I’ll love you no matter what, I’ll marry you no matter what. You know that, right?”

Warmth blooms through Geralt’s chest, as bright and fluttering as it was the first time Jaskier kissed him. Here he stands, Jaskier’s one and only, Jaskier’s choice to make a god. And it’s still his choice that really matters. His happiness, his future.

“Of course I do,” he says. “I want this.”

And he does.

He wants eternity. He wants Jaskier by his side till the stars go out. He wants to be something important to the world, but because he’s choosing to be, not because he’s being forced. He wants to be whatever it is he truly is.

He wants whatever life has to offer.

And now, something greater than life.

A relieved smile spreads over Jaskier’s face, and he tugs Geralt closer, pulling him into a kiss. Geralt closes his eyes, and savors his last kiss as a mortal. It’s warm and gentle, and he can hear his heart beating, can feel the ground beneath his feet and the air within his lungs and the sunlight streaming across his skin.

He doesn’t know what it will feel like to be a god. Jaskier has tried to explain, but he thinks that it’s one of those things that cannot be captured in words alone. And he’s eager to find out.

“Ready?” Jaskier asks when they pull apart.

“Ready.”

Jaskier gives his hand one last squeeze, and then he vanishes from sight.

His godly form isn’t physical. Very few are, from what he’s told Geralt, and those that are typically aren’t human. But Geralt knows that he’s here, knows from the songs that fill his head, well-loved ballads and half-forgotten lullabies and tunes he’s never heard before.

“Those are ones you’re making up,” Jaskier laughed when he asked him what those were. “I am the god of inspiration, you know.”

The songs get fuzzier as Jaskier moves away from him, and Geralt watches as the basin fills with a shimmering silver liquid, like condensed stardust, like moonbeams caught in a bottle. When it goes still, the songs grow louder, and Geralt can feel a warmth pressed against the edges of his brain like a hug. It’s time.

“I love you,” he says one last time.

A voice rises above the roar of music in his head.

_I love you too._

Geralt steps forward, runs his hand along the edge of the basin. One last moment of connection with the physical world. He breathes in. The air smells like honeysuckle and daffodils and spring—like rebirth and newness.

The world is his to embrace, now.

He lifts up his foot and steps into eternity.

***

When he wakes, he is hit by an overwhelming wave of pride and love.

He doesn’t understand where it comes from, at first. But before he can decipher it, he hears a rush of music in his head. He hears Jaskier’s voice—Jaskier’s _real_ voice—bouncing excitedly across his essence.

_Heart, love, oh, you’re awake! I’ve been waiting for days!_

_What’s a few days to someone like you?_

A cascade of windchimes, a crash of symbols. Jaskier’s laughter, when he’s like this.

_A long time indeed, when you’re dealing with wedding-planning relatives._

_I should’ve slept longer._

Another crash. Jaskier’s essence slips around his and it’s—it’s intimate in a way he could never describe to his mortal self.

 _You’re beautiful_ Jaskier says, and there’s real awe in his music. _Truly magnificent, I could wrap myself in you forever._

And that’s when Geralt realizes that the pride, the love—he doesn’t _feel_ it. He _is_ it. Those emotions, that warmth—they're who he is now.

 _What’s your domain?_ Jaskier chimes against him. _Come on, we’ve all been making bets._

What is his domain? Pride and warmth and—

Ciri, running towards him in the forest, shaking in his arms, growing strong and bold and entirely her own. Vesemir, shaking his head at his sons’ antics, but pulling a blanket over them whenever he found them passed out before the fire. Children, loved by their birth parents or not, and the men who claimed them as their own.

 _Fatherhood,_ he says, and that’s what he is. That’s the most important thing about him. _I’m the god of fatherhood._


End file.
